Reducing salt in packaged and restaurant food: More voluntary targets are proposed, but progress is slow

Among the first articles I wrote as I began my journalism career was on salt. In 1982, salt was called “A New Villain” on the cover of Time magazine. Studies showed that high salt consumption led to high blood pressure. 

Now, more than 40 years later, government regulators still are focusing on voluntary targets rather than mandatory ones.

In the latest effort, the Food and Drug Administration proposed new three-year, voluntary sodium reduction targets Thursday for 163 categories of foods, which, if achieved by the food manufacturing and restaurant industries, would bring Americans’ sodium consumption to safer levels.

The majority of sodium in the American diet comes from packaged and restaurant foods, so these targets would help Americans reduce their sodium consumption, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public interest group, said in a statement. Excess sodium chloride, or salt, consumption increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and kidney disease. 

The FDA describes the new sodium reduction targets as Phase II of an effort beginning in 2021, when the agency finalized voluntary targets for the industry for 163 categories of foods over a two-and-a-half-year period. Back then, the FDA estimated that, if achieved, those initial targets would reduce Americans’ sodium consumption from about 3,400 milligrams of sodium per day to about 3,000 mg per day. That’s not nearly as low as the 2,300 mg recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Compliance with the new draft guidance would further reduce average intake to 2,750 mg per day.

The center would like to have seen the FDA set a more aggressive target, said Peter G. Lurie, M.D., center president.

The agency also released an assessment of progress made from 2010 to 2022. The agency said that 40 percent of food categories are within 10 percent of their Phase I targets. Its data also show that, across all food categories, more categories showed decreases, 52 percent, than increases, 34 percent, in their sales-weighted mean sodium content, although the importance of the decreases and increases is unclear, the center said.

Most of the decreases in sodium content in the U.S. food supply appear to have occurred in packaged foods as opposed to in restaurants, where nearly half of food categories increased in sodium, more than the fraction that decreased.

The center calls this modest progress over the FDA’s baseline of 2010. However, it said more data is needed to study the increases and decreases reported by the FDA over time and for different categories.

“It’s as if the food manufacturing industry is setting us up for failure,” said Lurie, adding that little of Americans’ sodium exposure comes from the saltshaker or home cooking.

The center has been urging the FDA to reduce sodium in the food supply since 1978.

The Biden-Harris administration has endorsed the idea of long-term sodium reduction targets.

The targets proposed Thursday by the FDA are a definite step in the right direction, but could have been more ambitious, Lurie said.

“But success will only be achieved if we go beyond targets to enact a comprehensive strategy that involves outreach to industry, especially the restaurant industry, as well as monitoring the industry’s progress and reporting in detail to the public which food companies and restaurants are making progress with their products, and which remain the worst offenders,” he said.